The General List of Clichés within Sonic the Hedgehog Game Series
by lixiaofossil
Summary: Summary is inside the main text for its excessive length. Sorry for such inconvenience.


Well, I got this inspiration after one of my fellas from the United States recommended a parody web page entitled " **The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Clichés** " to me. Soon I came up with this lunatic and passionate idea of extracting the following "Principles" which can be frequently seen in the game series of Sonic the Hedgehog. Attention! There can be many cases of exceptions and extensions since this is only a "General List". If you don't agree with them…well, there's nothing I can do.

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 **1st: "Yeah! Me again!" Principle**

Description: Every time the primary main character is a sunny, brave, confident, optimistic, enthusiastic, blue hedgehog freedom-fighter, who has the maximum velocity of mach 1.2 and the ability of swimming to the bottom, with the heroic name ── Sonic the Hedgehog.

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 **2nd: "Oh no! Come on! You again?" Principle**

Description: Every time the primary main villain, evil overlord is a fat, fancy, freakish, jolly, insane scientist who is also a genius toy manufacturer with sunglass, brush-shaped mustache and doctor's degree. His name is "Ivo Robotnik Eggman".

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 **3rd: Indiana Jones Principle**

Description: Every time the bad guys are up to find a number of ancient artifacts ── seven pieces of candy-looking gems called "Chaos Emeralds". Meanwhile the heroes are struggling to compete with the villains, namely seizing all the Chaos Emeralds before the evil faction does, since the jewels contain a power that can be the key to either saving the world or destroying it.

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 **4th: The Lord of the Rings Principle**

Description: As the title says, the golden power-rings are extremely essential. Without them the heroes' chances for saving the world are slim. Not only they are fearfully brittle when the ring-count drops to zero but also in some games "keep a certain amount of rings" is the key to access the Special Stages to acquire Chaos Emeralds. So never forget to collect rings!

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 **5th: George Lucas Principle**

Description: The heroes do have their outstanding boffin with the name Miles "Tails" Prower who employs a proper amount of Hi-Tech armaments and equipments, but generally, technology is inherently evil and is the exclusive province of the evil side and seems very handy to achieve its maniac and lunatic ideal of world domination.

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 **6th: Toy Story Principle** (or **Total Annihilation Principle** )

Description: Yes, Dr. Robotnik is attempting to conquer the world with his Evil Robotnik Reich all the time. But despite your imaginations, it's hardly to find any lethal, strong, powerful, awesome Robot-shaped killing machines (such as duplicates of armories from Mobile Suit Gundam Franchise, Terminator Franchise and the Transformers Franchise) in his army, instead of squadrons of toy-looking bots. What makes you suspect these stuffs have capacities to initiate a "Full metal blood bath" over the planet, some of the enemy units are even cute enough to make your heart rejoice: "Is it necessary to eliminate a bunch of harmless toys? Maybe Doc is a good guy."

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 **7th: "Muhahaha…!" Principle** (or **"I HATE THAT HEDGEHOOOOG!" Principle** )

Description: No matter how many times he is defeated by Sonic, Dr. Robotnik always recovers from his failure so quick and is ready for another evil plan. For me, Doc's grittiness is to be appreciated. When Doc commences his plan, he is always full-loaded with absolute confidence the project will success ── although the history record shows the fact is "Permanent Negative". Sometimes Doc is too confident, even bold enough to send a defiant message to Sonic. Once again, the history record shows that keeping the operation secretly and silently in somewhere that cannot be found from Google Earth® will be much wiser.

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 **8th: Robinson Crusoe Principle**

Description: Dr. Robotnik always restarts his wicked project for world conquest on a remote island. That is supposed to work on his advantage ── most of these isles are missing from charts and only be mentioned in old legends, some of them also has ruins left by disappeared unrecorded aged civilizations of some sort with priceless ancient goodies contains great powers buried. But unfortunately, Doc sends a defiant message to Sonic…

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 **9th: Beachhead Principle**

Description: As the previous principle says, it's clear why Sonic always starts his new adventure from a beach or somewhere near the sea ── a patch of grove or forest, for example. With the green, flourishing surroundings, plus happy, rapid rhythmed BGM, it seems Sonic is going on a joyful trip instead of saving the planet from an evil maniac.

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 **10th: Echoes from Past Principle** (or **Déjà vu Principle** )

Description: There's always a zone of emerald latifoliate forest or grove, a zone of palmy beach, a zone of ancient marble ruin, a zone of sewer maze perhaps flooded with water, a zone of spectacular megalopolis full with skyscrapers and neon lights, a charnel haunted castle with traps everywhere, a prosperous urban of casinos, a zoneof desolated desert, a zone of taiga forest on alp covered with silver ice and snow, a zone of volcanic landscape with flowing lava, a zone of subterranean cave full with crystal reefs and magma streams, a zone of hyper-technological power plant connected to a fully-automated ordnance factory, a zone of maze consisted by innumerably axes, wheels, gears, big hay cutters, serried prickers, powerful laser fences, ultra-enormous-scale electrocircuits, unfriendly turrets and guard drones…

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 **11th: Las Vegas Principle**

Description:Why there always is a zone of casino complex? I'm confused by this question until recently, when I figured out that running casinos is one of the best ways to earn money. Since a world-conquest-scale operation devours tons of money, Dr. Robotnik has to use casinos as the primary financial income and seems very successful at it. But if Doc is good at running casinos, why doesn't he choose to be a casino trust instead of being a military dictator? Since conquer the world with economic power is much, much easier than using naked violence.

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 **12th: The Narcissist Principle**

Description: As Sonic says, Dr. Robotnik has got some sort of serious problem cause we can find a lot of "Dr. Robotnik-like" statues and decorations of various sizes in Doc's territory. He also constructs every Final Boss, even mere pawns in his shape too, although that won't raise level of his stateliness.

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 **13th: No Place Like Home Principle**

Description: Dr. Robotnik always set the capital of his reich at one of following positions such as "castle on high cliff above abyss of despair", "stronghold on isolated isle in lake of boiling lava", "fortress protected by theoretically unbreachable defence system", "Laputa-looking floating island", "Eclipse-Class Star Destroyer-scaled ultra-dreadnought", "Large Moon-sized armed space station equipped with a primary weapon capable to reduce an entire solid planet to spectacular nebula by only one shot"…You name it. However, the roughness of geography does no good to prevent Sonic from knocking at his hatch.

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 **14th: Permanent Motion Principle** (or **"Run! Forest! Run!" Principle** )

Description: Mostly the only thing heroes gotta do is dash to the goal of the act, so just ignore all the Manufacturing-Class enemy units, run fast as you can and blast through the map with Supersonic speed!

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 **15th: The Contra Principle** (or **Know Your Foe Principle** )

Description: Those huge, tough Boss-Class Robots contain large-scaled firepower always initiate their attacks in certain sequences then repeat the cycles again and again, so it'll be much easier to beat them when your replay those parts.

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 **16th: The Death Star Principle** (or **Hole in One Principle** )

Description: No matter how strong those badass those bosses are, each of them always has one or several weak points proved to be deadly (mostly on the cockpit, for example). So just aim, lock, launch and USE THE FORCE!

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 **17th: "Welcome to the real world." Principle** (or **The Matrix Principle** )

Description: Despite his heroic and supernatural behavior in animations & comics, Sonic is actually extremely vulnerable during the gameplay, even cannot penetrate a thin hatch made by aluminum alloy till find the switch to it. But bear in mind "that" won't blight him jumps freely from missile to missile or obliterates an Imperial-Class Star Destroyer-scaled superdreadnought by one single feather impact in CG movies.

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 **18th: Vain Efforts Principle** (or **Let's Start from the Very Beginning Principle #1** )

Description: After you breakthrough the game with the cost of huge amount of time and joules, the only thing you get on screen is Dr. Robotnik's bloat laughter that claims the victory is still his since you don't have all seven Chaos Emeralds in hand. You gotta replay the game and access every Special Stage to acquire all the "chaos stuffs" in order to watch Sonic's cool image at the end of Ending Credits that proves you've saved the world again. However, each Chaos Emerald is really hard to come by (especially in earlier games, I mean). Get stuck with this design? It is approved by SONIC TEAM® all the time. So whadaya do?

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 **19th: Dragon Balls Principle** (or **Let's Start from the Very Beginning Principle #2** )

Description: Every time you get started to play a new-released game, the Chaos Emeralds collected from previous game will be gone, you must re-collect them from zero. This design is also approved by SONIC TEAM® all the time. Bite me.

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 **20th: Diamond Cut Diamond Principle** (or **The Counter-Strike Principle** )

Description: The best countermeasure to a sniper is another sniper, the best countermeasure to an ICBM is another ICBM, the best countermeasure to Superman is another Superman, so the best countermeasure to Sonic is ANOTHER SONIC! That's why we have Shadow the Hedgehog, Silver the Hedgehog, and various models of Metal Sonic…

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 **21st: The One Principle** (or **The Soniclogy Principle** )

Description: Those Sonic-look-a-like characters sometimes may look cooler and packing a little more of kick than Sonic, but eventually, they fall victims of some conspiracies and become decorations on Sonic's medals of honor.

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 **22nd: Nobody Touch Nothing Principle**

Description: After the "Total Final Fight", I mean after Sonic smashes the "Real Final Boss", the entire Dr. Robotnik's Fortress will begin to collapse at once. But Sonic actually doesn't demolish anything that can compromise structural integrity of the complex such as main reactor or vital pillars supporting the vault. Anyways, the fortress collapses after the "Real Final Boss" is down. Inferior architects.

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 **23rd: "I'LL BE BAAAAAACK!" Principle**

Description: Dr. Robotnik is always permitted to flee free by SONIC TEAM® after Sonic vaporizes the capital of his Evil Robotnik Reich. So he can rest up and menace the peaceful world again later. Even Doc's miserable personal escape vessel is knocked out by Sonic when he's on the desperate fleeing, somehow he still can survive unscathed and with enough properties to reset his reich.

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 **24th: Villainous Capitalism Principle** (or **Das Kapital Principle** )

Description: So far, every game of Sonic the Hedgehog is presented by SEGA® Corp. Each of them is used to defraud you of your hard-earned money from wallet or from bank account. You are deceived into spending money, and you are grateful to SEGA® Corp. since they provide you with chances of being cheated…

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That's all I've got. Now I'm leaving for the construction of "The General List of Clichés inside Animations, Comics, Games and Light Novels, the Harem Genre". If anyone has any add-ons, just feel free to declare. See ya!


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